Starting from today, we're trialling a new ad unit with our partner that is called 'Teads' - this is a video based ad.

As far as we've been told, this is a 'polite' ad, which essentially means:

* It only displays a video when there's something to display. So if they're not currently serving anything to it, it won't show up and there will simply be an extra empty line in the page.

* The video will auto-play, but it will start off muted. If you're on mobile, you have to actively tap on the video to get the audio. On PC, it will play if you hover your mouse of it and then mute when your mouse leaves the area of the unit.

This is a unit we have to add manually to articles as we publish them - we're not rolling this out on all articles, but we will be doing it where it makes sense (and adding it to older articles that get regular visits), and we will probably experiment with the placement.

We've been told that a lot of advertisers are pouring more money into video these days, so this is a way to stay current that is as unobtrusive as possible. Please do leave us feedback (especially mobile peeps) on how you find this unit.

Just to recap, the only ad units that we officially support are:

* This new teads unit.* The thin banner that is at the top of the page.* A long and a thing 'MPU' unit that displays to the right of articles where the Discord widget is (on mobile these units appear either mid article or towards the bottom),* Background skins (disabled on mobile)

If you see any other units - pop-ups, take-over ads, ads where it redirects you to another page before taking you to our site etc... these are not supported. Please report them as well as any details you remember at the time so we can get rid of them! Same goes for questionable ad content as well.

"Determining the appropriate level of influence in somebody else's war is never a simple matter." - Special Circumstances